The Black Eyed Peas's will.i.am travels to the Democratic convention to offer his thoughts on job creation.

CharlotteStop me if you’ve heard this one: So, will.i.am, Arianna Huffington, Tom Brokaw, and one of the President’s economic advisers walk into the ballroom at the Ritz-Carlton for a panel discussion on job creation...

There is no punchline, except to say this hellbroth of personalities were all participating in a real event at the Democratic convention, and it was about as bad as it sounds. Officially, it was called “Opportunity: What Is Working - A Bipartisan Search for Solutions to the Jobs Crisis,” and it was sponsored by the Huffington Post. In total there were 16 people on the panel, which they accommodated by stopping after an hour and playing musical chairs. Aside from the aforementioned Big Names, the panel was rounded out with a smattering of tech CEOs, leaders of charitable organizations, and, yes, politicians.

Alan Blue, the co-founder of LinkedIn offered some remarks, though I didn’t pay too close attention because I was just waiting for him to personally apologize to everyone in the room for spamming their inbox with pleas to join his also-ran social network. (I currently have 58 email invites waiting to be deleted from acquaintances foolish to turn their address books over to Mr. Blue.)

Gerald Chertavian, the CEO of Year Up, an intensive one-year training program that teaches job skills to low income youth, was also a font of ideas. To juice the job market, Chertavian has created a PTC program—Professional Training Corps—which is analogous to the ROTC. It would be “swapping fatigues for business attire [and] rather than learning military moves, you learn about Microsoft mouse moves,” a tradeoff that sounds like all of the drudgery of the military but none of the adventure. Cheratavian also talks of a “G.I. Bill for urban young adults . . . to help them realize their potential.” Of course, there is a G.I. Bill to help realize the potential of urban young adults. It’s called the G.I. Bill. And ROTC grads would probably say that the leadership skills, discipline, and logistical management taught in the program are directly applicable to cultivating business skills and professional growth. But for some reason, encouraging young people looking for quality job training and a sense of purpose to join the military isn’t really an option on this panel.

San Antonio Mayor and Rising Democratic Star™ Julian Castro, outlined his city’s recipe for job growth in a surprising amount of detail, though all of the policies seemed unified by a tired theme—the city strong arms anyone who wants to do business with them into reinvesting in various municipal programs. Asked where he gets his job growth ideas, Castro said, among other things, “I have to confess I’m boring enough to read things like Governing magazine.” (Castro said nothing about benefiting from the aggressively pro-growth, anti-tax policies of the Republicans who run Texas at the state level.)

The only person on the panel capable of making real news was presidential economic adviser Gene Sperling. But his comments were brief and anodyne and he left before the second panel. But judging by the crowd reaction, no one was there to get an idea of what the president might be thinking about job creation.

The big draw was will.i.am, the leader of the wildly popular hip-hop group, the Black Eyed Peas. (Anyone who saw the Black Eyed Peas’s Superbowl half-time show a few years ago might better know will.i.am as History’s Greatest Monster.) Mr. will.i.am was wearing what appeared from the back of the room to be a black velvet tuxedo jacket over a t-shirt, and his hairstyle was vaguely cubist. Objections to will.i.am’s music aside, there’s no point in pretending will.i.am isn’t a very, very successful businessman who might have something interesting to say about job creation. Aside from his musical endeavors, he’s one of the founders of the wildly popular Beats headphone company. Much of his de rigueur charity work is directed at math and science education for public school kids, an unorthodox cause for a celebrity--and a very worthy one.

As one of the last remaining media dinosaurs—a consensus figure—moderator Tom Brokaw never seemed so old and so out of touch as when mustered all the gravitas his nasally baritone would allow to ask the writer of the hit song “Let’s Get Retarded In Here,” the following question: “How do you do what you do?” Brokaw further emphasized will.i.am’s relevance by telling the audience. “music has such an enormous influence on the generation we’re trying to reach now.” Anyway, here’s will.i.am talking about a science, technology, engineering and mathematics education for kids (STEM programs). I have reproduced his remarks in full, though to get the full mental picture, you’ll have to imagine his wild hand gesticulations throughout:

We always knew she was cartoonish.

"Want to guess which potential Republican candidate looks ready to pass the pH test on [cap and trade]? Mitch Daniels. In early 2009, when the issue was ill-defined, he was already arguing against it. That's a nice arrow in the quiver the next time he's asked about the 'social truce.'"

On Monday, Bill Kristol met Huffington Post purveyor Arianna Huffington at Vanderbilt University in Nashville for a rip-roaring debate about media and the middle class. (You can watch video of the debate here. And debate moderator Ben Smith of Politico has his own write-up here.)

Debunking a tired myth.

It’s time to set straight a myth that has persisted for many decades, perpetuated most recently by Arianna Huffington in her post, “Guns vs. Butter 2010.” The myth is that, as she put it quoting Eisenhower, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.” The fact is that the idea that a dollar spent on defense is a dollar not spent on helping Americans is entirely false. Leave aside the debate over the wisdom of American involvement in the world or the desirability of winning ongoing conflicts rather than losing them. The simple fact is that the overwhelming proportion of every dollar spent on defense goes straight back into the American economy.

This is just fun TV. Rudy keeps it nice and clean while Scarborough plays bad cop. Scarborough's lines about Huffington's former support of Newt Gingrich and her run for California governor are particularly delicious.